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87 TOGETHERNESS, COEXISTENCE OR CONFRONTATION – THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL CLIMATE AND CULTURE ON PEER-TO-PEER SOCIAL RELATIONS IN CATALONIA, SPAIN 1 MARIBEL PONFERRADA-ARTEAGA SILVIA CARRASCO-PONS Abstract This paper presents some of the results of the study ‘Coexistence and Confrontation among Peers in Secondary Schools in Catalonia’ commissioned by the Ombudsman’s Office of the Catalan government and carried out at the Institute of Childhood and the Urban World (CIIMU) in Barcelona, Spain, in 2005-2006. It offers a description of the indicators of malaise and exclusion among students at nine public and private secondary schools serving varying social environments in Catalonia. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were applied, based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with students, teachers, parents associations and school management, and a questionnaire for students in Year 1 and Year 4 of secondary school (ages 12 and 16). Though the results obtained also reveal a certain amount of verbal, social and physical bullying in these schools, this study’s main interest was the factors consitituting each school’s climate as it affected student peer-to-peer relationships. Such factors included the type of ‘model’ student promoted by the school; the values governing social popularity and stigmatisation among the students; the sorts of academic expectations placed on students by the school; the perception of teaching methods and practices among students; the social relationship between teachers and students as perceived by the latter; the different models of governance through rules and the level of internal coherence in applying sanctions; the strategies used by the school to create groups; and the degree of recognition by the institution of the diversity of students’ origins. Theoretical focus: beyond bullying n 2004, the Ombudsman’s Office of the Catalan government started to receive increasing numbers of complaints about peer bullying in the secondary school context, after the striking news of the suicide of a teenage student that later has come to be known as ‘the Jokin case’ 2 . As a result, in 2005 the Office commissioned the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (CIIMU) 3 to carry out an in-depth study into how school climates might be affecting relationships of I Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 15(1), pp. 87-107, 2010

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TOGETHERNESS, COEXISTENCE OR

CONFRONTATION – THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL

CLIMATE AND CULTURE ON PEER-TO-PEER SOCIAL

RELATIONS IN CATALONIA, SPAIN1

MARIBEL PONFERRADA-ARTEAGASILVIA CARRASCO-PONS

Abstract – This paper presents some of the results of the study ‘Coexistence andConfrontation among Peers in Secondary Schools in Catalonia’ commissioned bythe Ombudsman’s Office of the Catalan government and carried out at theInstitute of Childhood and the Urban World (CIIMU) in Barcelona, Spain, in2005-2006. It offers a description of the indicators of malaise and exclusionamong students at nine public and private secondary schools serving varyingsocial environments in Catalonia. Qualitative and quantitative techniques wereapplied, based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with students, teachers,parents associations and school management, and a questionnaire for students inYear 1 and Year 4 of secondary school (ages 12 and 16). Though the resultsobtained also reveal a certain amount of verbal, social and physical bullying inthese schools, this study’s main interest was the factors consitituting each school’sclimate as it affected student peer-to-peer relationships. Such factors included thetype of ‘model’ student promoted by the school; the values governing socialpopularity and stigmatisation among the students; the sorts of academicexpectations placed on students by the school; the perception of teaching methodsand practices among students; the social relationship between teachers andstudents as perceived by the latter; the different models of governance throughrules and the level of internal coherence in applying sanctions; the strategies usedby the school to create groups; and the degree of recognition by the institution ofthe diversity of students’ origins.

Theoretical focus: beyond bullying

n 2004, the Ombudsman’s Office of the Catalan government started to receiveincreasing numbers of complaints about peer bullying in the secondary schoolcontext, after the striking news of the suicide of a teenage student that later hascome to be known as ‘the Jokin case’2 . As a result, in 2005 the Officecommissioned the Institute of Childhood and Urban World (CIIMU)3 to carry outan in-depth study into how school climates might be affecting relationships of

I

Mediterranean Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 15(1), pp. 87-107, 2010

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coexistence in local secondary schools and thus having a negative impact on thewellbeing of students.

Rather than following a psycho-pedagogical approach that is chararacteristicof most of the classic studies on bullying and school climate, the study was carriedout from a socio-anthropological perspective, although the contributions ofprevious literature, regardless of disciplinary perspectives, were carefully takeninto account. Priority was given to looking at practices and relationships amongstudents and school institutions from a holistic point of view, focusing on studentagency in social interactions with and within the school. We therefore regardedgender, social class, ethnic/national origin and language4 not only as independentvariables but also as elements of processes that are constructed and (re)producedin the school as well as in peer relationships. The (re)creation of femininity andmasculinity, social distancing and cultural/ethno-racial/national and linguistichierarchies are interwoven in the processes of identity-building and also throughsocial relations. In particular, our approach draws heavily on Bourdieu’s notion ofdifferent forms of symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and Ross Epp’snotion of systematic violence (Ross Epp, 1999), a kind of inherent institutional‘violence’ that favours exclusion, malaise and inequality of power in the heart ofschools. Our main objective was to identify the factors and processes in schoolsthat students perceive as being of key importance in their relationships ofconviviality/coexistence, as opposed to the information provided by adult agentsin the same institutional space.

Schools and peer relationships

Exclusion in school: bad for many, good for some?

Ethnographic research in schools has shown how the institution of the school itselfcreates the conditions for violence and opposition among peers. Through the structureand the order within that structure is created what Payet (1997, p. 177) has called‘logical institutional discrimination’, a hierarchical mapping on the school structureitself5 which favours the creation of groups of winners and losers according to thedifferent levels of prestige they enjoy. Involuntarily, this also favours the emergencea system of ‘systematic violence’ for which nobody feels responsible but which hasthe effect of excluding some sectors of students (Ross Epp, 1999).

‘Systematic violence is found in any institutionalised practice that affectsstudents unfavourably. In order to be damaging, the practices do not needto produce a negative effect in all students. They may be beneficial for someand damaging to others.’ (Ross Epp, 1999, p. 18; italics in original)

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Hallinan & Williams (1989) have shown the influence of certain factors on theorganisation of schools when it comes to developing interethnic friendships, such asthe presence or absence of groups separated according to performance, the balancedpresence of children of different origins in the same class or the use of teachingmethods based on public exposure of students in their evaluation. But the school asan institution can produce class, ethnic and sexual segregation in spite of an apparentdiscourse of equal opportunity (Oakes, 1987; Payet, 1997). In Catalonia, previousresearch has also shown how the kinds of discourses circulating among thedifferent agents in relation to ethnicity and performance in the school affect thelevel of racism present in interethnic relations (Serra, 2001; Pàmies, 2008).

Segregation and violence: when does resistance emerge?

Academic segregation of the students and their consequent social isolationwithin the school increases school violence, as has been shown by research carriedout in France: ‘…the feeling of violence and the climate of anti-social behaviourgrows according to the increase in “internal” and social exclusion experienced byits students’ (Debarbieux, Dupoux & Montoya, 1997, p. 35).

Success in positive coexistence and bonding between students and the schooldepends on how this tension between differentiating and equalising mechanismsis resolved (Araos & Correa, 2004). Some British studies (Hargreaves, Hester &Mellor, 1975) show that the values and norms transmitted in low academic abilitygroups (constructed as ‘bad’) contribute to the crisis of oppositional sub-culturesamong young people. The working class sub-culture of ‘mates’ among youngpeople (Willis, 1977) is constructed in resistance to the school culture and thisimplies hostility toward more conformist, less ‘masculine’, minority and femalestudents. Student groups are constructed ‘against’ the others, thanks to a firmseparation between ability-level groups as well as daily practices in the school(Eckert, 1989; Flores-Gonzalez, 2005). Moreover, the de-legitimisation ofworking class culture (Feito, 1990), the emphasis on body control and behaviourand the repetitive teaching methods in working class schools (Fernández-Enguita,1997) also encourage resistance among students.

Hidden violence: organize, separate, teach

Violence is latent in school processes and structures, between powerrelationships in the institution and in relation to the teachers’ authority (Bourdieu& Passeron, 1977) and sometimes it only becomes evident in certain acts whichin themselves are unmistakeable distress calls, such as depressions, suicideattempts or blatant aggression:

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‘Violence corresponds to the unsought-after part of internal processes ofdiscrimination, remaining hidden or unnoticed (what has been calledsystematic violence), unless it takes the form of victimising actions that areunavoidable in school self-observation ...’ (Araos & Correa, 2004)

Bureaucratic organisation and disciplinary techniques (such as isolation,sorting of students) provoke feelings of being different and alienation in youngpeople from minority groups as a result of cultural distancing and a lack of power(Davidson, 1996), which in turn affects the formation of their identity and socialrelationships. On the other hand, on the specific subject of bullying, factors suchas the stress induced by high levels of academic competition, a decline inconfidence in education as a means to social betterment, the authoritarian stylesof teachers, strict hierarchies in school, harsh tools of discipline and weak teachingskills have revealed themselves to be key in the growth of this phenomenon inJapan (Yoneyama & Naito, 2003).

School climates and bullying

Moos (1979) defines school climate as a learning environment which involvesboth the categories of personal growth among students and the school’s system formaintenance or change, which includes order and clarity in the rules of conduct.Taking all this research as a starting point, our own definition takes ‘schoolclimate’ to have four dimensions:

• An institutional dimension, which includes elements ranging from the publicimage projected/attributed to the school, to the system of rules and howdiversity is approached.

• A teaching dimension, including academic expectations, teaching methodsand school rituals.

• A participatory dimension, which considers the extent of real participation ofstudents in the classroom and school.

• A relational/social dimension, which includes elements like social popularityamong students, the profile of the ‘ideal’ student, friendships, conflicts andrelationships of abuse and intimidation.

It has to be noticed that bullying itself remains an important interest, in spiteof our focus on school climate that we would regard as an important part ofprevious conditions for its emergence or development. We understand bullying asthe type of situations where a student is repeatedly exposed to negative actions byone or several of their peers, as originally defined by Olweus (1993) and adopted

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later by Del Barrio et al. (2003). We are talking about reiterated actions that revealintention and inequality of power between individual students. However, likePellegrini (2002), we also consider bullying a deliberate strategy for achievingstatus among classmates that has to do with systems of stratification at school andthe way social relations are understood.

Previous research in Spain that has focused on coexistence in the school contextand on peer bullying can be fundamentally grouped into the following categories:

• Measuring the extent of peer bullying (Bisquerra & Martínez, 1998; Mora-Merchán et al., 2001; Del Barrio et al., 2003; Oñederra, 2004; SerranoSarmiento & Iborra Marmolejo, 2005; Defensor del Pueblo, 2006).

• Analysing aggression among peers in relation to juvenile subcultures(Martínez & Rovira, 2001).

• Exploring the relations of coexistence in schools and families (Martín,Rodríguez & Marchesi, 2003) – one of the few that identifies school climateas an independent dimension.

Therefore, beyond a narrow focus on bullying, our study intended to answer thefollowing questions, as a guide to orientate our reconstruction of the conditionscreated by different school climates from the perceptions and experiences of students(Síndic de Greuges, 2006; Carrasco et al., 2007; Ponferrada & Carrasco, 2008):

• What factors of social, ethnic and gender stratification affect the hierarchiesand peer relationships in the school environment?

• What school processes emerge as factors of exclusion and malaise and havethe capacity to affect identities and relationship styles among young people?

• What peer groups emerge in the school schools, what characteristics do theyhave (class, gender, ethnic origin, group values, social and academic status)and what kind of relationships do they have with one another?

Methodology and sample

In parallel to a review of the literature on peer relations in schools, andfollowing a methodological orientation inspired by grounded theory, we organisedthree focus groups of students from different social, academic and neighbourhoodbackgrounds with the aim of incorporating their perceptions into the researchinstruments we intended to apply, namely questionnaires and guided interviews.

The fieldwork was carried out in nine secondary schools in different areas ofCatalonia. We collected data from students in their initial and final years ofcompulsory secondary education (known locally as ESO6 ), their teachers and

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their schools’ management teams. The selection of schools was made with thecooperation of a special unit at the Catalan government’s Department of Educationthat is devoted to preventing, responding to and mediating in situations of conflictor maltreatment among members of a particular school community (USCE7 ). Thenine secondary schools were selected to represent different types of realities interms of private/public ownership and management of the school; socio-economicstatus of students; location; proportion of immigrant students; and the availabilityof specific strategies for the promotion of good relations and/or mediationprogrammes, that is, whether a particular school had an official or unofficialculture of conflict resolution.

Different types of data were obtained for each school under study. The teamstarted by obtaining and analysing information about the school and its educationalgoals, rules and norms. Next, statistical data were gathered about the studentsaccording to sex and ethnic/geographic origin, as well as the number of disciplinarysanctions they had received, and their cause and resolution. Websites, journals anddocuments on discipline and conflict resolution were also consulted. Guidedinterviews were also carried out with members of each school’s management team(i.e., the head teacher and head of studies), the school’s educational psychologists,members of the Parents’ Association, Year 1 and Year 4 programme coordinators inall nine schools, and Year 1 and Year 4 students in a smaller subset of five schools.The students to be interviewed were selected with the help of the coordinators andclass tutors8 . Different students were selected from each class according to theirrelative positions in terms of peer leadership in the context of the classroom and theschool (in other words, we selected some students who ranked highly as peer leadersand some who had low rank). Finally, a questionnaire was administered to the fullset of students from all nine schools (N = 1,197). Each researcher personally visitedthe schools assigned until all the interviews were completed and the documents andstatistical data were collected. The same team personally handed out thequestionnaires to students and collected ethnographic data during pre-questionnairevisits and while the questionnaires were being completed.

Findings

Status, expectations and methods: ‘This school is crap’

Our questionnaires showed that 61.6% of students in the sample had between‘some’ and ‘a lot of’ confidence in the school. Significantly, however, 34.8%reported that they had ‘no’ or ‘little’ confidence – a proportion of low confidencethat was reflected throughout the four years of ESO. In relation to the academic

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dimension, 44.1% of students were of the opinion that the school thought of themas a ‘normal student’ and 29.4% as a ‘good student’. The qualitative analysis ofour data showed that one of the factors with the most positive influence onrelationships of coexistence are the high expectations placed on students and thepositive image projected on students by teachers, as transmitted through teachers’discourse and practice in the daily life of the school. Competitiveness and highacademic demands, contrary to what was expected, did not appear to be conditionsthat favoured conflict. What had a negative impact, rather, were the lowexpectations and/or negative views that the teachers had of their students, asindeed the students had of themselves. It even emerged that some schools viewthemselves as ‘dead ends’, in a hopeless situation because of the socio-economiclevel of their catchment area, where the operating agents appear generally to havegiven up. In those schools, desperation feeds feelings of malaise among students,which does not necessarily indicate that they treat students any worse, but pointsto a general disheartening and undignified social and school atmosphere. In theseschools, students make greater demands to be ‘respected’ (34.7% compared with22% in ‘high’ prestige schools) and perceive low expectations on the part of theschool and negative labelling by the educational community:

R: What do the people in the neighbourhood say about this school?S1: About [name of school] they say a lot of bad things...S2: They say it’s crap, and they say it, too, about all the rest [of

schools in the neighbourhood].R: They say it about [name of school]?S1: Yes.S2: And they say to us, are you going to go to [name of school]? It’s

bloody awful!

(R – researcher, S1 – male student, S2 – female student, Year 4, School 5)

The students state that conflicts and insults arise more easily when they arebored in the classroom and cannot see the sense in what they are doing. Thisboredom in the classroom, with repetitive methods and students’ skills leftunchallenged, ultimately constitutes institutional violence.

‘The intentional exposure to boredom and repetition is one part, but onlya small part, of everything that is systematically violent in our schools.’(Ross Epp, 1999, p. 18)

The most common complaints by students, especially in private schools9 –where children feel they have a right to complain – are related to the professionalcompetence of teachers and their teaching methods: an excess of homework,

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lecture-style teaching and low-level content. In the majority of schools, theteaching methods most commonly described can be summed up as listening tothe teachers’ explanation, summarising, doing exercises and correcting them.

Now read, summarise, explain and do the exercises. (Male student, Year 4,School 5)

They make you read a bit each and they explain, and then they carry onreading, explaining and reading... (Male student, Year 4, School 3)

They say bla, bla, bla and that’s it…if you understood it, that’s fine, and ifnot, that’s fine too. (Female student, Year 4, School 2)

Yes. Because they don’t explain, and you’re copying a really long part, andyou don’t understand it, and they just explain it the same way. (Femalestudent, Year 1, School 5)

The connection between the professional competence of the teachers and theemergence of classroom conflict seems evident, and is something that showed upin the focus group discussions and again in the interviews.

But the classes are really shit, and then they call your parents to say thatyou don’t do anything, that you cause trouble. (Male student, Year 4,School 1)

Ideal and contested identities: ‘I see myself as completely the opposite of whatthey want’

In schools that promote an ideal student profile that combines academicsuccess with social skills, among peers it is best to be seen as sociable and‘everybody’s friend’. Therefore, better relationships of coexistence are promotedwhere compatibility between the academic and the pro-social is valued. However,this was only observed in one of the high-prestige private schools with studentsdrawn from the middle and upper social classes, where the whole communityexpects a high level of performance from the school and its teachers.

R: What do you think is the ideal student profile in the school?S1: I don’t know. Maybe like [name of student; the girl interviewed

as a positive leader].R: How would you define her?S2: Very open...S1: Studious, very friendly, laughs a lot, she’s always laughing and

happy...

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S2: Yes...she’s like always really positive, you never see her likethat...always has a smile on her face, she’s quite mature I thinktoo...

S1: YesS2: Socially she’s got time for everything, for friends, for being with

everyone, so in the end everyone gets on with her.S1: She’s got girlfriends too, they meet up a lot, I don’t know...

(S1 – female student, S2 – male student, Year 4, School 4)

The ideal profiles promoted most intensely in the rest of the schools in thestudy are based on pro-academic and pro-authority identities, but without anyspecific links to social skills in terms of either relationships with peers or adults.And no incentive is offered to pursue those identities – something that correspondsto the low degree of participation by students in classes and in school. For moststudents, the notion of participating is limited to answering the teacher’squestions. They either do not know how to participate in the decisions taken bythe school, or – especially in private schools – feel that their participation isallowed but tightly controlled. Students tend to think that the school is largelyconcerned with producing good academic results and that they are expected toadopt an attitude of apparent studiousness, of ‘paying attention’, as well as anunquestioning acceptance of school authority (‘shut up and do as I say’).Relationships with teachers are perceived as social capital (i.e., it is advantageousto be a ‘teacher’s pet’). It is a conformist, silenced identity that uses the strategiesof subterfuge. This is a good example of students describing what is expected ofthem:

S1: Someone who never skips class, who studies, doesn’t talk and isa bit of a teacher’s pet.

S2: I don’t know. Yeah, like this.

(S1 – male student, S2 – female student, Year 4, School 2)

R: What do you think the ideal student is like in this school?S: One who pays attention, gets good grades.

(S – male student, Year 4, School 5)

In schools with a majority of middle class students, there appears to be greatertolerance of diversity of dress and leisure habits. The main axes of maturity/immaturity that are seen through body appearance, dress and leisure habits createdifferent, mutually exclusive groups that affect relationships of coexistence,but also have dimensions of social class: ‘chavs’ versus ‘skaters’; ‘brats’ versus

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‘chavettes’. These are oppositions and distinctions in identity that interweavegender, class, age, lifestyle and consumption habits, as well as ethnic/nationalorigin and habitual language, suggesting that these differences should be takeninto account by the school as being fundamental in friend or enemy relationships.However, there are two other dimensions in which the school institution itselfplays a key role: the attitude to school (being either a rebel or a conformist in class)and, linked to the former, the attitude in peer relationships (between‘marginalised’ and ‘hooligans’). The construction of gender and sociability isinterrelated with the attitude toward school, given that it is precisely the malestudents perceived as being conflictive that are most popular socially and alsomost desirable sexually to the girls. Therefore, opposition to school and peeraggression forms part of the construction of traditional heterosexual masculinity(which continues to be mainly dominating), as has been shown by otherresearchers (Mac an Ghaill, 1994; Swain, 2003), where this masculinity implicitlybrings with it resistance to school authority.

S: The most popular are the ones who get into most trouble.R: Why do you think they are so popular?S: Because they are troublemakers.

(S – male student, Year 4, School 5)

...It depends on what you like. For example, the Peruvian girls likePeruvian boys, the girls like the lads with attitude, and the lads...and soon...but the successful ones are a bit fit and give it a bit of attitude. I don’tlike them with attitude, but yeah, normally they are. (Female student, Year4, School 2)

However, among the girls, popularity is implicit in the evaluation of the femalebody, since the most popular young girls are the prettiest and most attractivephysically in the eyes of the boys.

R: Who are the most popular girls in the school?S1: The ones with the best bodies...[expresses this more with hand

gestures, as if he was holding one…]R: Don’t stop…S1: The ones who are fit, the fit ones...well, the ones that aren’t bitter

and bad-tempered...S2: Yes, the ones that aren’t stroppy, the ones who are nice to you,

and have a pretty face and...S1: And if they’re fit, even better.

(S1 & S2 – male students, Year 4, School 5)

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In schools in working class districts, the pretty ones also have to be ‘hard’ and‘a bit rebellious’. In these areas it is much more difficult to be ‘respected’ if youdon’t show that you’re prepared to take insults or jokes. These are the codes thatgovern student-to-student relationships:

R: Don’t you get on with each other in general?S: It’s just that I’ve changed...before I was really like that, and here

if you haven’t got, to put it crudely, a pair of balls, you won’t lasta minute because I remember that I went in and I was like I wasand they started on me, and they even wanted to hit me, and I’vegot a really strong character but I never showed it, and then Idid show it and they said, well that stupid girl isn’t so stupid, soI carried on like that, and now, yeah, people respect me...butthey also have an idea about me that isn’t true. Because now I’mbehaving how I am [talking about the time of the interview] butthe people in class see me as ‘yeah, man, whatever’ you knowwhat I mean? They see me as mouthy and I’m not like that, I amsuper. People see me as being like mouthy, revolutionary,because I don’t go to class...

(S – female student, Year 4, School 2)

The data from questionnaires show that male students continue to be the mainfigures in acts of physical aggression: 6.4% of boys replied that they had regularlyhit one of their classmates, compared with 1.4% of the girls. Models of femininityand masculinity – and even more when these are related to a social class that isimplicitly or explicitly de-legitimised by the school authority – have a stronginfluence on relationships of coexistence. Schools that do not manage to createsocial inclusion in their institutional environment and which attend sectors of thepopulation which already perceive themselves to be excluded in the social spherepromote separations among peers according to their attitudes of conformity orrebellion toward the school.

Exclusions and diversity: ‘They pick on the Arabs a lot’

Despite the fact that 40% of the young people in the survey reported that theyhad never felt insulted or ridiculed, 22.1% of foreign origin students reported thatthey had been ‘frequently’ or ‘always’ insulted, compared with only 12.4% forlocal origin students. Most of the students denied feeling isolated at school, butamong those who claimed to feel alone, the percentage of young people of foreignorigin was double that of young people of national origin (18.7% and 9.3%

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respectively, combining the ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ categories). Thestatements made by some foreign origin students makes their sensation ofvulnerability evident, something that is not seen in most of the studies oncoexistence, where neither ethnic-national origin, phenotypical characteristics norfamily language use are taken into consideration. Despite this situation, there is ageneral absence in schools of plans or policies designed to combat racism andpromote cultural coexistence. Here is some evidence from an Ecuadorian student:

S: I want them to come more often [referring to the police], thereare always problems, the other day they smashed my nose in afight because they were insulting me and hitting me.(...)

R: Do you have problems with your classmates?S: Yes, they are all really immature and they see me being quiet and

they pick on me. They get [name of boy] every day, somethinghappens and it’s [name of boy], always [name of boy] (…) Theother day [name of boy] insulted me in class and I did him overin IT. And in the Catalan class I didn’t hit him because theteacher came.(...)

S: And when I get tired I start to hit out, start punching people.

(S – male student, Year 4, School 2)

Our qualitative data showed that the experience of the Gypsy minority in theseschools is also dominated by aggression and insults by their classmates, some ofwhom are foreign origin students who have themselves been assaulted byclassmates. So the spiral of exclusion and violence grows. Young Moroccans, forexample, for whom we were not able to collect any evidence in this study as theywere not selected by the teachers for interviews in any of the diverse categoriesthat we proposed (this in itself is an important piece of information that will formpart of our research at a different time), are spoken of by their classmates asconstant victims of aggression.

R: What about in the other school?S: No, it was in primary that there were problems. But in this

school it doesn’t happen as far as I know. What I have seen, andmore last year, is that the Arabs get picked on a lot.

R: Who picks on them?S: The Spanish. There were some that went around as if they owned

the place, and they picked on them a lot...

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R: And how did the Arabs react?S: No, no, they didn’t do anything, because they were weaker, and

they saw that they were being marginalised...I did see thathappen.

R: And did anybody say anything?S: No, everyone ignored it and did like when there aren’t any

teachers, and they don’t say anything so they don’t get hitafterwards. But you could see one looking in the mirror and theywere hitting him.

(S – male student, Year 4, School 2)

The only exclusion that is apparently minimised is that of gender, given thatgirls feel that they receive equal treatment to boys at school, although they doshow lower indexes of self-confidence (13% of girls and 5% of boys do not agreewith the statement ‘I like myself as I am’).

Finally, behaviour such as insults and even physical aggression against malestudents who have masculinities that do not fall into line with the traditionalgender models continue to be present in schools, both in working class andmiddle class environments. Some schools carry out occasional activitiesintended to foster gender equality and tolerance in tutorials and talks, but ingeneral do not have cohesive plans to offset the gender values common in theschool environment and among the students’ home environment, such ashomophobia, and in some cases, students even think that such talks by theirteachers legitimise behaviour that is anti-homosexual. Not demonstrating atraditional male identity places a male student in a highly vulnerable positionamong his peers.

R: Is there anyone who doesn’t have friends, who is all alone?S: No, it’s not that they don’t have friends but they’re very

weak...for example there is a really effeminate boy and even Irecognise that I’ve gone over the top with him sometimes...andthere are some who come and hit him and they told me all sortsof things from last year...Oh my God.

R: Like what for example?S: Well they hit him, and then loads of people came and hit him,

and they called him a poof, and because they see he’s reallyweak and every time they come for him he’s with the girls, andthey know that the girls won’t do anything, well...

(S – male student, Year 4, School 2)

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Diversification vs. homogenisation: ‘Neither more stupid nor cleverer: levelled’

Segregation of students by academic performance, including the creation ofreinforcement groups for certain students in certain subjects, contributes tonaturalise and interiorise stigmas and hierarchies in students’ minds about theirown classmates. ‘Low’ group students develop increasing hostility toward peersin the ‘high’groups as well as a negative view of themselves as students. Thisstratification ends up causing students to make generalisations about their peersaccording to the class groups they belong to:

S2: In Class A are the swots, in Class B as well, Class C is mixed andin Class D are the hooligans.

R: And what do you think about being in Class D?S1: I don’t care. I wouldn’t like to be in Class A, they are all prats

and daddy’s boys.

(S1 & S2 – male students, Year 4, School 1, ‘Low’ group)

S1: In Class A they are all people who might later do a module orwork and in Class B they’re people who’ll do Baccalaureate orthey think that...

S2: They have a chance of doing it...

(S1 – female student, S2 – male student, Year 4, School 2, ‘Low’ group)

R: Did they organise the classes by level?S: I don’t know, but in the other class there are people who are

repeating the year and they are more behind.(S – male student, Year 4, School 2, ‘Low’ group)

In some of the schools in the sample, the ‘low’ level group was placed in anarea apart from the other classes, adding a physical dimension to their symbolicseparation, as could be seen in the results of the questionnaires. The effects areclearly negative, since some of the tutors interviewed even recognised the extraeffort they had to make to motivate these students and include them in school life.In the schools where groups were made up of students regarded as diverse in termsof ability, students thought that in their classes there was ‘a bit of everything’, andthe schools that experimented with completely flexible groupings10 promotedrelationships of companionship, since the perception of isolation was reducedand the perception of an improved situation of coexistence between studentsincreased.

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R: What do you think of this kind of organisation?S1: I think it’s good, because you learn to work in a group, well at

my school we did that too but we always had to say you, you andyou, and then you had the group. I think it’s very good forlearning to work in a group. For togetherness.

S2: I think it’s good, because whether you like it or not you alwaysmeet new people, of course you have to get to know themworking for a year you get to know people, afterward outsideyou go with who you want, don’t you? But you meet more people.

(S1 – female student, S2 – male student, Year 4, School 4)

The school itself contributes to the creation of envy and malaise through theorganisation of groups by academic performance and risks promoting aggressiverelationships. For example, two of the students in a ‘high’ group explained howtwo classmates of weaker physique were bothered by some of the students in the‘low’ group, in clear response to the subordinate position assigned to them asmembers of a low-prestige group.

Rules and discipline: Where do they come from? How are they understood?And how is social order achieved?

Some 59.8% of students at private schools and some 45.4% at state schoolsreported that conflicts of coexistence were most frequently resolved usingdialogue, with a higher degree of satisfaction in conflict resolution beingexpressed by the former. A strict system of rules merely enforced throughpunishment appears to be negative for coexistence. However, a strict system ofrules may have a positive effect when the rules encourage negotiation, and datasuggest that this is more often happening in schools with high academicexpectations of students, families and teachers, typically the private ones. A jointprocess of close academic and personal counseling by class tutors in these schools,where teachers are clearly expected to account for results in this sense, acts as anemotional cushion and facilitates tolerance and even identification with the systemof rules.

Two of the elements mostly responsible for a school’s positive climate are thepresence of rules drawn up by the school community as a whole, where studentsand teachers in all categories perceive themselves as participants to a certainextent, and the perception that the rules are applied consistently in the resolutionof conflicts without relevant perceptions of injustice. In this regard, 59% ofstudents reported that school conflicts were resolved fairly and 62.4% thought thatall teachers used the same criteria to apply the rules. The way in which sanctions

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are applied is an important factor, since arbitrary and unreasonable application ofpunishments on the one hand and the devaluation of the effect of written warningson the other appear to be serious factors in the creation of malaise at school andresistance among young people. Such things lead to a general devaluation of thesystem of rules, which thus becomes less effective when more serious problemsarise.

R: What do they normally punish you for most? Do they send noteshome?

S1: For the smallest, stupidest thing they’ll give you a note.S2: Sometimes you say something and you think they’re going to

give you a note, and sometimes you say another thing and theysay ‘Note!’ And what are you supposed to do?

S1: When you deserve one, they don’t give you one.

(S1 – female student, S2 – male student, Year 4, School 2)

Students’ reactions were extremely negative before their perception ofauthoritarianism, defined by the existence of teachers who would not allowstudents’ intervention, who use punishment frequently and who always imposetheir own opinion. The threat of heavy sanctions to prevent those problemsperceived as being extremely serious, such as physical fights, substanceconsumption and dealing, physical aggression against teachers, may be aneffective element of control. However, if students are not included in the rule-making process or in their application and high expectations of their behaviour arenot placed on them, then other long term consequences may come about, such asthe intensification of levels of resignation and lack of motivation among students,paradoxically leading to classroom disruption, high levels of absenteeism oraggressive peer-to-peer relations outside school.

Relationships with the teachers: ‘They should inspire confidence’

With respect to relationships of proximity between teachers and students,quantitative analysis of our questionnaire results showed that 73.2% of youngpeople ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the relationships were good.Nevertheless, 11.3% reported that teachers ‘often’ or ‘always’ ridiculed them.When the students feel that they are listened to by the school as represented bytheir teachers, this even seems to compensate for strict rules and high levels ofpunishment. A quality tutorial project and a relation of trust between teachers andstudents are preventive factors in terms of the generation of confrontation.

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Emotional closeness is one of the highest demands of the students, especiallyamong lower-middle and working classes, together with the demand for ‘respect’,since some of them complain of cold treatment and even public humiliation as anormal part of school life. They want teachers who, in addition to knowing theirfield, are pleasant and involved as people, have a basically benign attitude towardstudents and do not automatically resort to punishment:

They should be more involved with the kids, and not send us out when wehave a joke. (Male student, Year 4, School 1)

They should be kind, explain things to you well, make you laugh, make alittle joke if you are bored of listening, I dunno, be a good teacher.(Female student, Year 4, School 2)

They should tell you things about themselves. (Male student, Year 4,School 3)

In connection with this, we might recall the observation by Valenzuela (1999)with respect to the centrality of what she calls the ‘politics of caring’. It wouldseem to be exactly what students in our study are asking for of the school as amodel for good relations and as a social context in which they spend a good partof their days.

But it can also be concluded that the majority of students in our sample do notsee their schools as ‘dangerous places’, as Potts (2006) has called them. They feltgood about their schools and had a lot of friends (86%) in an environment wherethey, as youth, place considerable value on peer friendships: 73.7% valued theimportance of friends as an influence on their personality. Moreover, most of them(75.5%) agreed that their school encouraged positive relations, despite the fact thatcertain specific practices provoked malaise, such as teachers’ ridiculing of theirlearning efforts, the non-generation of relationships of trust, invasion in spheresthat they considered to be private and non-intervention in cases of physicalviolence. More specifically concerning bullying behaviours, 14.3% of studentsresponded that they had been insulted, spoken badly of or ridiculed ‘frequently’or ‘always’, while those who did not report ever having received this treatmentaccounted for 41.3%. In relation to physical violence, 4.7% reported that theirclassmates hit them ‘frequently’ or ‘always’, while 79.2% confirmed that they hadnever been hit.

The analysis of interviews, however, revealed the profiles of students who areespecially vulnerable in school: academically-inclined students with few socialskills; young homosexuals or those with non-conventional masculinities/femininities; those who change schools and social contexts and who have to learn

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a new cultural code of peer relationships; those from a low-prestige social classor ethnic-national origin; but also students from ‘majority’ groups perceived asbeing weak and who thus more easily fall victim to the ‘revenge’ of students fromminority or marginalised social sectors.

Concluding remarks

This study gives some clear indications about what the key factors are in termsof creating a school climate that promotes solidarity and togetherness amongstudents. The affective expectations that students have about their school, howstudents from one year are separated into smaller groups and the degree ofrecognition and legitimation of the differences between students as manifested bythe practices of the school institution obviously have a bearing on how studentsdeal with each other at school. Likewise, the style of authority exercised by theinstitution is important, with a need for consistency in the application of rules andsanctions as well as a sense that students are participating in the governance of theschool. It is also essential that the quality of classroom instruction is such thatstudents are not bored and active participation by students is fostered andencouraged. Last but not least, the type of student profile that is promoted bythe school as an institution through daily practice and interaction can havea considerable impact on student peer-to-peer relations.

Obviously, schools differ between themselves in climate and culture and so dothe schools in our sample. In this paper, we have identified and analysed some ofthe range of elements that commonly emerged in all of them that had an impacton peer relations though in varying importance and intensity as experienced bystudents. Three years after the public hearing to the Catalan Ombudsman reportbased on our larger study in the Catalan autonomous parliament, the Departmentof Education has created a mandatory programme11 for all schools to implementwith the aim to promote positive social relations. Unfortunately, it only partiallydraws attention to the role played by the school climate and culture on the natureand quality of peer relations and focuses by large on a disturbing and pervasivenotion of inherent conflict as part of contemporary youth.

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Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented in Spanish at the 1st International Conference onSchool Violence (2007) organised by the University of Almería, Spain. The authors take equalresponsibility for the paper.

2. See, for example I. Viar Echevarría’s paper in Diariovasco.com (14/02/06). 3. L’Institut de l’Infància i Món Urbà (CIIMU) is a consortium created by the Barcelona City

Council, the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Unversitat de Barcelona, the UniversitatAutònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

4. Language is a key element in any study of this sort in Catalonia given that most of the studentpopulation is, to some extent, bilingual in Catalan and Spanish, and there are also increasingnumbers of first or second generation immigrant children who may speak a third language (ormore) at home.

5. In a conversation with the coordinator of Year 4 in one of the secondary schools included in thestudy, the explanation she gave for how the groups were formed was ‘First of all we make thestructure and then we place the students in the structure that we have created’. In other words,the groups were created with pre-assigned and different levels of prestige, since the basis forgrouping at the school in question was academic performance for a standarised categorisation,not the real students’ characteristics and/or needs.

6. In Educació Secundària Obligatòria (ESO), students are typically aged 12 to 16. 7. The Unitat de Suport a la Convivència Escolar (USCE) is a special unit of support to help schools

in situations of conflict resolution, basically developing mediation strategies. It is also in chargeof training activities and courses on mediation for teachers.

8. The total number of students in each ‘Year’ (i.e., form or grade) are divided into several(typically four) groups. In ‘homogeneous’ grouping, students are separarted according toacademic level (what is known in the literature as ‘streaming’). The tutor is the teacher who isin charge of all the students in a particular group.

9. Although the many so-called ‘escoles privades concertades’ in Catalonia are technically private,they also receive subsidies from the Catalan government.

10. New groups were formed for each new task that the students had to complete.11. Programa de Convivència i Mediació Escolar (see http://www.xtec.cat/innovacio/convivencia).

Maribel Ponferrada-Arteaga and Silvia Carrasco-Pons are members of theEMIGRA Research Group, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology,Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Their respective e-mail adresses are:[email protected] and [email protected]

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